


Talia

by ornithologicalbirds



Category: Kinder- und Hausmärchen | Grimm's Fairy Tales, Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale), Sole Luna e Talia | Sleeping Beauty - Giambattista Basile
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-02 17:44:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4068838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ornithologicalbirds/pseuds/ornithologicalbirds





	1. Chapter 1

The autumn air was sticky with flies, but the girl lying in the corner of the small cabin hardly stirred to brush them from her face. She was forcing her concentration down a narrow channel, birthing her pain into a mental closet. Her broken arm seemed to throb every eight seconds, impeding her attempts to box the pain in.

The fact that her arm was broken and her back spotted with sores ran around in her head like a cockroach in a drain. Her arm was broken and her back was spotted with sores but if she was who she was it could not be possible; her arm was broken and her back spotted with sores, but if she could push it away it would not be there anymore. A fly crawled close to her eye, rubbing its little hands together with mischief. She blinked, and it took flight.

There were two people there in the cabin with her. Both had freckled faces, but one had long red hair and the other had long black hair. The black-haired woman would kill flies, carry the girl outside to void her bladder, and cajole her into trying to exercise. She liked to joke with the redhead. But the redhead did not talk to nor touch the girl in the corner.

And the girl in the corner did not speak to either of them. She spent her efforts on lying in bed, uncomfortably aware that this was not the only bad thing that had happened to her, but completely unable to recall what had happened.

She could remember the sound of her mother’s voice, and the feeling of her friends’ embraces. She could bring to mind the sweet taste of ice cream and the bitter smoothness of imported xioclat (her favorite luxury). She could remember the white silk gown she had worn on her sixteenth birthday and she could recall that the seamstresses had accidentally stuck her with a pin exactly six times as they fussed over the fit. But what had happened to her – what had happened?

The cabin had greased-paper for windows, which caused the light to fade from dim to dimmer to dark. Night came, but sleep did not come. The black-haired woman would sleep in the chair near her. The girl in the corner would lay noiseless until an hour or so of sleep crept up to her.

The cycle would repeat itself the next day, and the next. The girl in the corner was unsure of how many days it had repeated as there was nothing to break up the days. She had lost track, or perhaps she was unaware of the days that were different, just as she was unaware of what had happened to her (except that it had caused a broken arm and a sore filled back – a broken arm and a sore filled back and legs that could not support her entire fragile weight).

Somehow the black-haired woman knew her name. The girl in the corner could not remember speaking it to her. The girl in the corner could not remember speaking anything to her at all. But she also could not remember having her arm splinted or her sores dressed. The last memory that was not the monotony of the day interspersed with the soft pulse of pain was the sweet taste of cake against the roof of her mouth.

The black-haired woman was softly gossiping with the redhead, falling in and out of the strange clicking language they both favored. The black-haired woman thought that the girl in the corner was out of earshot. The girl in the corner was not out of earshot, and was not going to correct her. The black-haired woman was leaving and thought the redhead was incapable, and also unreliable. The redhead took exception to the black-haired woman’s judgement.

The girl in the corner rolled over to face the wall, wishing desperately to sleep. Instead, she fell into her past, thinking on her mother’s friend Adelaide.

Adelaide had a mole on her chin, long brown hair, and a great fondness for mushrooms. The girl had met Adelaide at age twelve. Apprehension had nibbled at her stomach as she struggled to dress in her mother’s remodeled silks and brush her cheeks with an excess of cosmetics. Tears had flocked in the corners of her eyes when Adelaide said to her mother, “You might as well have educated this one in a convent, considering how little she knows.”

It had been an astute (if hurtful) observation. She had grown up ringed by mountains instead of convent walls, and locked in by snow instead of the mother superior. The end result was the same: an unfashionable fool.

That had changed, though. She had walked down the presentation hall of the August Court garbed in white and blue, with a garland of orange blossoms in her hair and her train dragging behind her. No one thought she was unfashionable or foolish then. No one. They thought her presumptuous, and they thought her overconfident. Unfashionable? Never.

“Talia,” said the black-haired woman from her place in the chair. “We need to talk.”

Talking seemed as bland and dull as choking down watery oats. The thought of it imbued her bones with weary acceptance.

Being Talia felt as if her blood flew through her body taut and itchy and far too red. How could she be Talia? Talia floated ethereal down the presentation hall, crowned by orange blossoms and followed by an elegant train. This creature, lying alone with a broken arm in a shabby hut had no seeming relation to Talia.

How could she have told the black-haired woman her name?

“I have to go on a business trip,” the black-haired woman said. She pushed her leathery feet hard against the floor and the chair sprang to rocking. “Raff says you’ll be cared for. But Raff’s not going to push you. I need you to push you. If you aren’t careful, you’ll lie in that bed until you die.”

Death would be an escape from ballooning and itchy veins trapped in a small and fly-filled house.

“You’re not quicksick. I don’t know what kind of sick you are, and I don’t know how to fix you. Maybe you have a sickness of the spirit. I’m afraid to leave you. Raff thinks you’re getting better. I don’t think you are. You’re just as sick, but it’s quieter than it was before. You need to try to get up and do exercises with Raff’s help every day. I can bring you back a gift, if you do that. Is there anything you would want?”

She wanted her mother. She wanted her friend Adelaide. She wanted a white gown cut from silk and fitted to her body with exactly six pinpricks to the skin. She wanted a garland of orange blossoms and a blue velvet train embroidered all over with gold.

But if those things could not be had, she wanted an end to the creak of the rocking chair. She wanted the dim light to stop dimming in the corner of the grease-paper windows. She wanted it to grow brighter and brighter, until it enveloped the entire world, the black-haired woman and the redhead, the stove and the chair, the bed in the corner, and the yellow-haired wretch filling it.

“ _Mbi’kokika_ ,” the black-haired woman clicked in her strange language. “I need you to try to do these things. Get up and exercise every day. Drink the tea I left. Don’t drink the laudanum – I don’t think it’s safe. Eat the millet and drink the soup that is served to you. Don’t eat anything too rich. Try to talk. I will write these things down for you to help you remember.”

Remember. Did the black-haired woman know? That was another mile separating this girl lying listlessly on a mat on the floor from Talia in silks and velvet. Talia-in-silks-and-velvet kept her weaknesses in. Talia-in-silks-and-velvet would not have spoken a single fearful word to this tattooed shoeless woman in men’s clothing.

“Here,” said the woman, tucking the note she had written into the girl’s slack hand. “Remember: exercise, drink tea, eat millet and soup, don’t drink laudanum, don’t eat poorly, and talk. You will get better.”

The woman did not believe that the girl would get better. She knew this because the black-haired woman then took to softly gossiping with the redhead, shifting from strange to familiar language with facility. The black-haired woman still thought that the girl was out of earshot and the girl was still not going to inform her of her mistake. The black-haired woman thought that some things could not be cured, and that the girl in the corner had lost her will to live. The redhead took exception to the black-haired woman’s judgement.


	2. Chapter 2

She lay perfectly still, pretending she had fled her body, leaving her broken arm behind.  Perhaps she would, perhaps in the way the black-haired woman expected, and perhaps not.  She didn’t know.  No one ever told her how she would die.

If she had a book it would serve as a mean of escape.  Talia loved to read – she had devoured almost every book in her family’s library.  A good story could serve just as well.  A good story could immerse you, lead you, captivate you.  She knew this because when she was fifteen she had shared a room with a yarn-weaver named Matilde.  Dirty or clean, fantastic or realistic, if it came out of Matilde’s mouth, it felt real. 

Matilde had a prodigious talent for acquiring small luxuries.  How many times had she walked into the room and found her sipping on stolen sparkling wine  _en déshabillé_?  Once, they had stolen bottles from the kitchen together.  Matilde wrapped her fingers around the brut and Talia the demi-sec.  Talia savored the sweet sting of the carbonation and indulged herself in another filled flute, and another, until her chest blushed forth with warmth and the world ticked like a clock hand.  She only stopped quaffing the wine when she found herself heaving into her wash basin.  Matilde crowned the moment with stifled peals of laughter.

The next morning, the sun split Talia’s head.  She groaned, and roiled in her bed. 

“It’s going to be fine,” Matilde said softly, laying a small white hand on top of Talia’s.  “Here.”  She pushed a cool glass of watered wine against Talia’s lips.  “A hair of the dog that last night bit you.”

Gratitude and shame mingled within her frame.  Matilde brought her a hangover cure – but it was Matilde who got her drunk in the first place.  Living with her was to constantly tiptoe along the line of acceptable behavior.  Adelaide liked tiptoeing the line.  Mother did not.

The redhead was moving about the dim room, pulling down a bottle, uncorking it.  The girl in the corner pushed her mouth against the glass proffered to her, and parted her lips.  The girl in the corner tasted cinnamon, but it went down dark and bitter.

A hair of the dog that last night bit you.  But where did the redhead find cinnamon?  It made her body fill like a warm balloon.  The world touched soft and peaceful.  The light filtering through the greased paper above the stove had small swirls of dust dancing through the air.

Kneeling under bloodred stained glass, small swirls of dust dancing through the air.  Mouth.  Words.  Prayer.  Forming the Consecrated Word. 

Kneeling to eat dinner – formal style.  Mouth.  Words.  Lies.  An alibi, an alibi for Matilde.

Kneeling.  A man caught in her throat of mouth/words/lies.  _A lady’s behavior around others tells her breeding.  A lady’s behavior around men tells her breeding._

_Candies and flowers, candies and flowers, take from men only candies and flowers._

_Pleasantries and entertainment, give them only pleasantries and entertainment…_

Flowers?  Candies?  Pleasantries?  Entertainment?  What is a flower/candy/pleasantry?  Take what they will give you as if grabbing a handful of candy.  Intimacy is a tool, and only children cannot see it as such.

 _Children see it as a means to satisfy an immediate need_ , therefore Matilde was a child.  Children do not see it as a stratagem in the long game, the only game, therefore Matilde was a child?

The game?  Every person knows the rules.  Its rulebooks?  You could find them on any shelf, and Talia had read them all:    _Of Principalities_ , and  _The Rules of Military Engagement_ , and  _The Nature and Causes of Economic Growth_.  No matter the book, there was only one game. What to do, what to do?  How?  Was it fair?  Did it matter?  There was no other game.

There were winners and losers.  The redhead and the black-haired woman were losing the game – paper for windows, boiled birdseed for food.  Her mother and father were winning – linen, tin, lampreys – although there were always setbacks – embargos, Grouse People, war.  And sometimes there were advances that appeared to be setbacks, or setbacks that she had thought might be an advance?

A letter.  Neat handwriting.  Messy signature.  Come visit.  You are wanted.  She had never left the snow-encircled valley before. 

It had been a disappointment (not as much as living out a shell of a life on a mattress in a fly-filled hut).  Maybe she was talented?  Important?  Wanted?

No.  People had started to wonder what was wrong with her.  They had wanted to laugh at her.

She must not give them the chance.  She _did_ not give them the chance, she realized with pride.  Friends:  Idriya, Agostina, Matilde, and Lucia. 

A body not composed of flesh.  A body a mere filmy balloon filled with no more than grace, beauty, and  _sprezzatura_.  A body that moved through hobbies like a mermaid through water.  Easy, nonchalant, beautiful.  A body that rode like a centaur, sang like a nymph, shot like an Amazon.  Lies, of course, like the ones that filled Matilde’s mouth. Lies.

The only truth came with 47 strings.  Was it something she was born to?  Something she came to?  There was no knowing, but it filled her with an unknowable warmth, an indescribable peace.  Something she thought she couldn’t feel without its pedals beneath her feet and its strings beneath her hands (although maybe she felt it right now, right here, lying in final peace in final pieces in a corner of a small room in a house with only one room).

It had been a gift, one her mother and father hadn’t intended to give her.  There were only two true gifts that they wanted to give her:  a life free from fear and a life free from want.  They wanted to give her peace through these things.  They gave her money, dresses, instructors, protection.  They hid from her facts, worries, knowledge.  Important knowledge (you see, they knew how she would die – they knew it but would not speak of it).  This was how they thought peace was made.  The truth:  peace is to be made under the fingertips.

They knew how she would die.  She wondered if this is what they saw:  a broken arm, a failing appetite, dying unrecognized but at peace in a strange place attended by strange and destitute people.

Were they looking for her?  She had to believe they were.  Her mother would not allow such a thing to happen to her.  And they had a twenty year head start, if this is what they saw.  They would know where to find her and how.

If it was written that she would die here, she would die.  But if her mother was looking for her, she would at least live until she arrived, flushed with sweat and seated upon her chestnut blood-horse.


	3. Chapter 3

She had never felt more terrible.  The sun beat down through the trees like a nail driving into flesh.  She choked on bile.  Vomit dribbled weakly down her chin.

Never?  The cloying scent of turpentine.  The empty knock of a hammer.  Really?  Never?

Absolutely never.  Hot – and sticky – and filled with a darkly churning stomach – and why was someone talking to her?

“It’s normal, you’re fine…” the black-haired woman repeated, wiping a soft cloth at the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll pitch you a facer if you don’t stop talking.”

“You?  You couldn’t get out of bed if you wanted.  You’ve got the laudanum sweats.  I _told_ you not to drink it.”  The black-haired woman turned her head and spat.  “When did you start talking?”

“Go cock up your toes,” she spat out, her good hand desperately searching for some barb to throw at the black-haired woman.

“Whoa there, Talia.”

“Don’t you dare – don’t you dare – don’t you dare –” Her indignance was interrupted by another all-consuming wave of nausea.  Her stomach lurched.

“Three days should do it.  You’ll feel better in three days.”

She didn’t want to feel better in three days.  She wanted to lie in the corner of the quiet house, refusing birdseed and sipping on cinnamon.

“I promise.  Three days.”

“I hate you,” she whispered as she turned and turned, desperately searching for a measure of comfort that did not come throughout the night.

The one thing that did come to her were the stars.  They spilled cream and light in a broad swath across the moonless sky.  She fell between the outline of the Shed Antler and the fixed star of the Small Spoon. Her arm hurt, her body itched for a taste of cinnamon, but it felt muted – unreal.  She lay there for eons, a faint star between the Antler and the Spoon, until the birds began to shriek.

 

It was mid-afternoon.  Her body prickled with sweat, but the nausea and shakes had fled.  The black-haired woman sat beside her, hands calmly mending a ripped hem.

She’d heard the redhead’s name before – it started with an “R” sound – but she didn’t have a clue for the black-haired woman.

She placed her good hand on her companion’s shoulder.

“What is it?”  She didn’t look up from the hem.

“Your name – what’s your name?”

“You don’t remember?”

She shook her head.

“ _Mbi’bonga Tjotyerwa_.  You can call me Judy.”

“What’s the redhead’s name?”

“Raff.”

“Where’s Raff?”

“Far away from you.  _Mbi’kokika_ , why didn’t you listen to me?”

She shrugged a shoulder, and cast her eyes toward the horizon.  That M-shaped mountain was oddly familiar…

She placed them in her mental map.  That was Antelope Pass – the best way into the valley.  She looked from peak to peak.  Grouse Mountain – Goat Rock – Cherry Hill.  She was in Aldard, on the south side, to the left of Aldard River.  Some things had changed since she’d been in the capitol.  Must’ve been landslides, she surmised, examining the exposed red streaks on Cherry Hill.

She looked at Judy’s face.  The tattoos around the eyes, the freckled skin.  She didn’t wear a hat.  She marked herself - but not as an Aldardian villager, nor as a highborn woman.  Judy was a hill tribeswoman.

The girl might call herself a hillwoman out of pride to be from the mountains, but that was different from being a hill _tribeswoman_.  They raided villages, stole livestock, diverted streams.  Had this been what her mother had seen?  Starving in the south mountains, too nauseous to eat, relying on the dangerous help of a hilltribe?

She had to get back to the redhead.  Red hair was safe – likely an Aldardian villager, or maybe an immigrant from the fogbound coast. Tattoos – not so much.

Disbelief tickled her forehead.  “How long have I been befogged?”

“Two months, maybe?  Ever since we found you, you’ve been that way.”

She was so foolish.  Wallowing in pity and drinking spirits when she could’ve been trying to go back home.

“Look – I’ve noticed you don’t like it when I call you the name you told me.  So what would you like to be called?”

“No – Talia is fine.”

“You’ve told me you’ll hit me and you’ve cried when I call you that.  Makes me not much inclined to call you that anymore.”

“It’s the name my parents gave me.  I just – I don’t feel much like that person anymore.”

“Probably because that person is gone from this earth.” 

Judy’s black eyes met her horrified visage.  “Don’t take me that way.  _You’re_ not dead.  And the person that you used to be isn’t dead – she lives in your memories.  But she is gone from this earth.  You aren’t going to be the person you were before.  You carry that person inside you.  You’ve formed a layer around that person, and they shaped who you are now, but they aren’t you.  That’s how people change, and evolve.  Don’t be sad.  Let’s name this new person.  Let’s celebrate that new person.  It’s customary to name this new person in honor of the person who helped change you.  What should we call you?”

Turpentine?  Tears?  “No, Talia is _fine_.”  She quickly changed the subject.  “Why are you Judy?”

“Well, like I said, my name is Tjotyerwa, but it can be hard to pronounce.  So Judy’s a good-enough approximation.  I’m named after my mother’s close friend, Tjotyengwa.  She was my teacher.  Why are you Talia?”

“Just what my parents named me.”  She had to get away from this woman.  They had a nasty habit of revenge-killings, and if she found out she was the Honorable Talia, she might be the next dead.  “When can we go back to Raff?”

Judy turned back to her mending.

Talia lay on her back staring up at the pines above her.  Perhaps she’d see a gliding squirrel when nightfall came.  Judy was camping on-the-quiet – she had a small stove fueled by spirits, but no fire, and no tent, either.  She’d taken off quickly.

How had she gotten here?  She needed to calm her confusion and fix her memory.  She had been deeply confused for a long while.  She remembered Judy told Raff she was going to die.  Then Judy went away?  And she drank a lot of laudanum.  Now Raff went away, and she is stuck with a tribeswoman.

She could talk now, though.  And she had a new game.

She used to think that there was only one game:  accumulation.  But this one – survival – was delightfully urgent and visceral.

She needed to get away from Judy, and back to Raff.  The redhead would help her.  But… “The redhead – Raff – why doesn’t he talk to me?”

“Because you cried when he tried.  I was worried about leaving you alone with him.  But I was worried for the wrong reasons.”

“You warned me about the laudanum.”

“You weren’t that bad off, but you needed some time away from it.  Raff thinks it’s terribly effective.  Well, it is terribly effective, but it’s dangerous.”

“When can we go back?”

“I left him behind.  I’m one of the only people who can disappear on him.  I’m not sure we should go back.”

“We can’t live here forever.  What about when it rains?”

“I thought we’d go to my people.”

That had to be prevented at all costs.  When they discovered she was Talia, they would kill her.  The black-haired woman, Judy, didn’t want to call her Talia when she cried, wouldn't let Raff talk to her when she cried.  She might not let them kill her if she cried, but that wasn't a risk Talia wanted to take.

She called up the smell of turpentine, the sound of hammerstrokes.  “No,” she said softly, tears welling in the corner of her eyes.  “Why?” she sobbed.

“Why what?”

“Why… are you…” She sniffed loudly for dramatic effect.  “Taking me awayyyyy…”

“Because you needed time away from the bottle.”

“I don’t want to go awayyyyy… That was my hoooome…”

“Oh, really?  Is that why you laid around in bed all the time, feeling sorry for yourself?”

“I don’t know why you’re so crueeel…”

“For the love of _Tuotu e’zekoka!_   You work on walking, I’ll take you back!”

It wasn’t the immediate result she’d hoped for, but she could make that work.  “You promise?” she asked, between sniffles.

“Yes, yes, I promise.”  The woman laughed, and then said, “Seems like you haven’t given up on life completely.”

Talia wiped her crocodile tears away, and spoke the truth.  “I decided I wanted to live to see my mother again.”


End file.
